Women of color stake out common ground at conference

Cindy Suarez

Marly Pierre-Louie calls it the elevator treatment.

“When women of color approach each other, we often look each other up and down and are unable to connect because we’re too busy thinking only one of us can win, and the other has to go down,” she said.

“I’m tired of it,” she said, speaking at a women-of-color-only gathering at Northeastern University. “There’s not enough love among women of color at Northeastern. I’m sure it’s not only at Northeastern.”

The dynamic was very different at the gathering. The excitement in the air was palpable as youth, adults, and elders, a high school student, college students, professors, community activists, blacks, Latinas and Asians came together to share their stories and build community.

Although women of color have much in common, there are vast differences between them as well. Some of are model minorities. Others are more sexualized in the media. Still others benefit from light skin privilege. Some don’t even identify as women of color.

“We hold on to our ethnic backgrounds too tightly to come together and make change,” said Ivelisse Sanchez.

At the gathering, however, women talked about moving beyond the prejudices they have against each other, and learning to negotiate similarity and difference. Oftentimes, they focus on their differences and don’t build community with each other.

Many said: I need support. Sometimes I feel I’m out there alone. I came because this is a space for women of color only. We need to work out our issues without being observed. I’ve never been to anything like this. It’s about time we had something like this. We need more of it.

According to Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde, by Alexis DeVeaux, the black women’s movement in the United States began over 20 years ago in Roxbury, where black women academics and activists met at yearly conferences to theorize their lives and organize to improve them.

These women wrote many of the movement’s foundational texts, such as the pioneering “All the Women Are White, All The Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies,” edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith.

Audre Lorde was one of the most influential. Her book, “Sister Outsider,” became a classic for women of color and white women alike.

These women knew each other. They inspired each other. They wrote about their lives. They responded to the needs of poor and working class women. The movement grew as these bold and visionary black women created a new genre.

In the late ‘80s, the movement moved into the academy, as universities began offering black women’s studies courses. In time, the movement lost its activist spirit, as the few women of color in the academy struggled in isolation.

Even when women of color spend years working hard to attain a PhD, as many of the professors at the gathering attested, many don’t last more than three years in the academy.

“Women of color in academia is a tense issue,” said Robin Chandler, director of Northeastern University’s Women’s Studies Program and host of the event, “and it’s because the dialogue never occurred. There’s a distancing that occurs between women of color and white women faculty.”

Chandler was a panelist at the first ever national gathering of black women academics, MIT’s “Black Women in the Academy: Defending Our Name, 1894-1994.”

“Even though it was praised,” said Chandler, “I thought it was elitist. There were a lot of rock stars, in-fighting, and preening.”

At this gathering, no papers were presented, and the conversation was not limited to a few elite panelists. Instead a circle was held where each of the 70-plus women could speak. Participants, according to their passion and interest, called breakout groups. And child care was available.

An open session was available in the afternoon for whites and men.

According to Chandler, there are a few women of color professors in the Boston area who win research grants and publish books, but, with few exceptions, they have no connections to the community.

“It’s a class issue,” said Chandler. “For the most part, this is a middle-class bourgeois group. The revival of the women of color movement can’t happen because of class, and the fact that academia makes women compete.”

There’s also a difference between academic research, which is generally written for scholars, and applied research, which is geared towards hands-on application to community challenges.

Academia rewards professors who excel at academic research and publishing with tenure. It generally does not recognize work directed at those outside of the academy. So activist professors seeking to directly address the challenges of oppressed communities often have no venue for this type of work, or a network of peers.

“I need to be connected,” said Shirley Tang, American Studies and Asian Studies professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boton. “I need to hear people’s stories and understand them. I’m looking for community and networks in the academy and other professions, with women from all walks of life.”

In spite of the lack of such spaces, the immense need and desire for it, and the fact that many other social groups come together with impunity, this gathering stirred protests from the larger white community at Northeastern University.

“White students can spend 100 percent of their time with whites,” said Chandler, “but when people of color do it, the powers that be protest.”

The protest appears to have been initiated by one white woman, a Northeastern University student who wanted to attend the women-of-color-only portion of the gathering.

According to Mike DeRamo, Northeastern University’s Student Government Association vice president for academics, the fact that being a woman of color was a requirement for getting into the event was a violation of the school’s anti-discrimination policy.

“I support the gathering,” he said, “but we felt that she should be able to get in to at least observe because she’s interested in issues of race.”

The women of color gathering was suggested and supported by the predominantly white faculty and student body of the Northeastern University Women’s Studies Program.

The Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies, which includes Boston College, Brandeis University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, Simmons College, Tufts University, and University of Massachusetts at Boston, asked to join as sponsors.